ROURKELA: When an elephant was found dead by suspected electrocution at Dumerta village in Bondamunda gram panchayat (GP) near Rourkela on Wednesday, a mob of villagers sympathetic towards the two suspects prevented Rourkela Forest Division (RFD) officials from arresting them.
Forced to live in perennial fear of elephant raids amid significant rise in fatal attacks by solitary tuskers and the forest department’s failure to protect them, the general sentiment is more or less the same.
Reliable sources said between June and September, as many as six villagers were killed across RFD limits, with the Birmitrapur range alone accounting for three deaths. Almost all deaths were caused by tuskers moving alone, the sources added.
Suresh Kalo, a villager in Bondamunda GP, said, “For more than a year, villagers have been forced to live in fear of single tuskers or an elephant herd appearing in the middle of villages out of nowhere, especially at night.” Citing a change in the behaviour of the giant animals, Kalo said while herds largely concentrate on feasting on standing crops and are easily noticeable, solitary tuskers are aggressive, unpredictable and hard to notice. “Poor villagers do not feel safe inside their mud houses as single tuskers often raid houses in search of food,” he said.
Rourkela divisional forest officer Ravikant Meena admitted that handling an elephant moving alone was challenging. “Compared to the forests of neighbouring Jharkhand, migrant elephants usually find the forests of RFD limits in Odisha safe,” he said. Meena added it is natural for bull elephants to get separated and later reunite with their respective herds. The DFO said elephants including solitary tuskers have undergone behavioural changes largely due to stress of squeezing forests and food sources along with frequent hostile encounters with humans.
He said human habitations across the Panposh and Bisra forest ranges are more vulnerable due to lack of continuous thick forests. He said the RFD teams are engaged in continuous tracking of single elephant or herds and alert the villagers accordingly to minimise chances of human-animal conflicts. Meena said while they are relentlessly trying to protect human lives and properties from elephant raids, the vulnerable rural population too gets sensitised on different safeguards.
About the tusker death at Dumerta village, he said the confirmatory autopsy report is awaited and appropriate action would be taken.
Instances of a single elephant causing loss of human life and property is not limited to RFD, as the Bonai and Koida forest ranges of Bonai forest division and some ranges of Sundargarh forest division have been facing the same challenge for a long time.